Conventional systems, devices, and techniques directed toward the restoration, rehabilitation, or development of a subject's functional capabilities have failed to give rise to significant and/or lasting increases in subject functional capabilities, and have particularly failed to significantly enhance an expectation or likelihood that an individual can attain a “breakthrough” or sudden/dramatic/unexpected surge in their functional capabilities.
For instance, for individuals who are functionally impaired as a result of neurologic damage (e.g., resulting from a stroke or traumatic brain injury), such individuals are typically treated using physical therapy to rehabilitate the loss of function of a limb or another affected body part. For many patients, little can be done to improve the function of the affected limb significantly beyond the recovery that occurs naturally without intervention. One existing physical therapy technique for treating stroke patients constrains or restrains the use of a working body part of the patient to force the patient to use the affected body part. For example, the loss of use of a limb is treated by restraining the other limb. Although this type of physical therapy has shown some experimental efficacy, it can be frustrating, time-consuming, therapist intensive (and hence expensive), and limited in its efficacy, and hence has not been widely adopted.
A need exists for developing truly effective systems, devices, and techniques for restoring, rehabilitating, or developing a subject's functional capabilities. Such systems should be capable of facilitating functional gains under conditions that are expected to synergistically enhance or optimize subject functional performance, learning, and/or favourable neural reorganization/neuroplasticity, such that breakthrough functional gains can more readily occur. Such systems should further be capable of use in a manner that is significantly or substantially subject independent, i.e., which requires little or minimal therapist involvement.